Egyptian volunteers and aid groups are waiting for the crossing to reopen.
Egyptian aid trucks moved closer to the only Gaza border crossing not controlled by Israel on Tuesday, but with no agreement in place to deliver aid and with the Palestinian side closed, it was unclear when they would be able to pass.
After nine hours of negotiations, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said early on Tuesday that he had agreed with Israel to develop a plan to get aid to Gaza, but the timeframe for any deliveries remained unclear.
At least 49 people were killed in an overnight Israeli bombardment of Rafah, where the border crossing is located, and the nearby town of Khan Younis, Gaza’s Interior Ministry said.
Later, aid workers gathered on the Egyptian side watched the dark smoke from another apparent attack on the Gaza side, beyond a concrete border wall, according to footage shared with Reuters.
Egypt says the Rafah crossing, a crucial artery before the fighting and now a key route for desperately needed supplies to the Israeli-besieged Palestinian enclave, has not been officially closed but has become unusable as a result of Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip. silk.
Some dual nationals who had gathered in recent days awaiting the opening of the Rafah border crossing began approaching the border, but many said they stayed away because of the airstrikes.
Israel began its intense bombardment and siege of Gaza after a devastating attack by Islamist Hamas militants on October 7.
Gaza’s 2.3 million residents are without power, pushing healthcare and water supplies to the brink of collapse, while hospital generators are running out of fuel. Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced in the Hamas-ruled strip.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday it urgently needs access to Gaza to deliver aid and medical supplies.
Early on Tuesday, some 160 trucks left al-Arish in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, where a raft of aid was awaiting an agreement on aid delivery, a witness told Reuters.
The trucks heading to the border contained Egyptian aid, and international aid remained in warehouses in al-Arish, said Ahmed Salem of the Sinai Foundation for Human Rights.
Salem and another security source said Egypt had repaired roads inside the border crossing that had been damaged by previous Israeli attacks.
Negotiations
Antony Blinken lobbied hard for a plan after the leaders of the six Arab states he visited in recent days all signaled that getting aid to Gaza should be a top priority, a senior US official said.
Both the US and Israel were concerned that Hamas would confiscate or destroy the aid, Blinken said. These concerns, along with fears that aid would be used as a cover for weapons, hampered a planned delivery on Monday, two Egyptian security sources said.
An agreement was reached that the aid would be delivered to specific secure locations in Gaza under supervision, the security sources said, in exchange for limited evacuations of foreign passport holders.
A senior US official said no agreement on such a plan had yet been reached.
The official said Biden’s newly appointed envoy for Middle East humanitarian affairs, David Satterfield, would meet with Israeli officials on Tuesday and begin hammering out details of the plan.
Egypt and other Arab states oppose any plan that would see large numbers of Palestinians leave Gaza.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
